Foreword

In a nation at war, teamwork by the whole people is necessary for victory.
But the issue is decided on the battlefield, toward which all national effort
leads. The country's fate lies in the hands of its soldier citizens; in the
clash of battle is found the final test of plans, training, equipment, and-above
allóthe fighting spirit of units and individuals.

AMERICAN FORCES IN ACTION SERIES presents detailed accounts of particular
combat operations of United States forces. To the American public, this record
of high achievement by men who served their nation well is presented as a preface
to the full military history of World War II. To the soldiers who took part
in the operations concerned, these narratives will give the opportunity to see
more clearly the results of orders which they obeyed, and of sacrifices which
they and their comrades made, in performance of missions that find their meaning
in the outcome of a larger plan of battle.

s/Dwight D. Eisenhower
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Chief of Staff.

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WAR DEPARTMENT
Historical Division
Washington 25, D. C.
4 April 1946

Small Unit Actions, eleventh in the series of monographs on American
operations in World War II, marks a departure from earlier numbers in that series.
It presents, instead of a coordinated treatment of a larger operation, four
detailed narratives dealing with small units which took part in such operations.
Each narrative has a unity of its own, but the actions dealt with are separate
and distinct, relating to four campaigns in three main theaters of war.

There are several reasons that justify such a publication. The most important
is to give both the military reader and the American public solid, uncolored
material for a better understanding of the real nature of modern battle. Military
operations on the scale of this war if treated, as they must usually be, in
terms of armies and corps, can give only an outline account of the fortunes
of units smaller than a battalion, and very often the battalion is treated as
the smallest counter in the moves described on a battlefield. This tends to
be misleading; a battalion has no such unity as a battleship, but is a complex
organism that maneuvers ordinarily on a front half a mile or more in width,
includes a variety of specialized weapons, and often has attachments of engineers
or tanks to provide greater tactical flexibility. In jungle or hedgerow country,
the battalion frequently exists only as a mechanism to coordinate, perhaps with
the greatest difficulty, the separate engagements of companies, platoons, or
even squads. When the record (or the military history) sums up an action by
saying, "The 3d Battalion fought its way forward against heavy resistance for
500 yards," only the man who has himself experienced combat is likely to realize
what this can involve, and what the phrase conceals. It does not give the story
of the front line action as experienced by the combat soldier. That story, hardest
of all military operations to recapture and make clear, lies in detail such
as that offered by the narratives presented here.

A further reason for such a publication has been recognized in the past
by American military leaders, as by others. In training for modern war, particularly
in armies largely officered in lower units by men taken from civilian life,
there is much need for concrete, case-history material which company and field-grade
officers can use to find out what actually happens in battle. Manuals must deal
with doctrines and theory; their material is generalized. There has always been
need for factual supplement, to show how tactical doctrines, good and bad, actually
work under the stress of battle conditions. But military literature has tended
to leave this field of research to the novelists, and military records have
not in the past been designed to furnish an adequate basis for study of small-unit
actions. After the First World War, the American Army endeavored to collect
such materials, and found them hard to get and difficult to evaluate. The best
were included in a useful and interesting volume, Infantry in Battle,
prepared under the auspices of The Infantry School, Fort Benning.

From its inception in 1943, the Historical Division, War Department Special
Staff, had as one of its alms the securing of sufficient data to support future
work of this type. For obtaining this data, as well as information at higher
levels and on other phases of operations, the Information and Historical Units,
attached to field armies, conducted extensive interviews with personnel of units
engaged in typical, unusual, or critical actions. The interviews were accompanied
by terrain study of the battlefield, sometimes conducted with members of the
units being interviewed. Every effort was made, by careful checking and rechecking,
to obtain a full and accurate accountónot for the sake of a colorful story,
but to have a trustworthy record for

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whatever use it afforded. Sometimes (as in the case of two of the actions published
here) practically all survivors of participating units were involved in group
interviews that might last two or three days for a single group. The scale of
the effort is suggested by the fact that some 2,000 indexed interviews have
come back to the War Department archives from one theater.

The four narratives given here will serve as samples of the source materials
thus obtained, containing in very large measure data which are not to be found
in unit records. The latter were used in every case, however, to check and supplement
interviews.

The actions chosen for this publication illustrate widely varying tactical
problems and methods. Only one (Pointe du Hoe) represents a highly specialized
form of action; the others are typical of scores of battles in their respective
theaters of operations. All are average in the sense that they are not "success"
stories, but cross sections of a war which involved reverses as well as victories.
This fact will be obscured in histories of campaigns and major battles. for,
in these, U.S. forces were almost uniformly successful. But the larger successes
were won by actions like those recorded here; in every phase of the war battalions
and companies went through a daily fare of experience that was never uniform,
that nearly always included some measure of trial and even defeat as part of
the fuller pattern which, over a longer period, added up to victory.

The interviews for, and preparation of, the four narratives should be credited
as follows: Pointe du Hoe, Historical Section, European Theater of Operations:
The Fight on Tanapag Plain, 1st Information and Historical Service: Santa
Maria Infante, 7th Information and Historical Service (Fifth Army); Singling,
3d Information and Historical Service (Third Army).

Small Unit Actions is based on the best military records available.
As far as possible, names and ranks of personnel were checked with records in
The Adjutant General's Office. Roster of the enlisted men who participated in
the Santa Maria Infante Operation and The Fight on Tanapag Plain
were not accessible. It was impossible to obtain full names of all men mentioned
in the operations and to check last names, so it is expected that some errors
occur in spelling of names and in grade designations.

Five photographs (pp. 9, 13, 37, 75, 91) are by the U.S. Navy: three (pp.
79. 87. 107) were taken by the U.S. Marine Corps; eleven (pp. 1, 8, 10, 20,
32, 42, 49, 126, 130. 160, 182) are from the U.S. Army Air Forces; three (pp.
92, 105, 109) are by the 1st Information and Historical Service; twelve (pp.
176, 191, 192. 193, 194, 198, 199, 200, 202, 203, 204, 210) were taken by the
3d Information and Historical Service: four (pp. 116, 123, 142, 212) were taken
by the Joint Intelligence Collecting Agency. All others were furnished by the
U.S. Army Signal Corps.